Miscellany

 

It was, of course, inevitable: once Dubai hit the headlines with its financial woes, the sand vocabulary usage would rocket into high gear: "Glittering ambition built on sand" reflects a common theme - "emerging market," "palaces," "dreams," and the entire economy would seem to be built on the stuff - at least "city built on sand" is both literally and figuratively appropriate. "Sandcastle shatters" represents one end of a spectrum of opinion, the other of which is "a storm in a sandcup" - the latter is at least a novel image, but one is left at a bit of a loss as to what kind of vessel a sandcup might be.  Various personages are predictably described as having "their heads in the sand" and urged to extract them; there are endless "lines in the sand" even though the material is constantly "shifting." Then there's the "sandstorm" imagery, with one source carried away on the poetic winds as "sandcastles hit by sandstorm." All of these phrases come from just a brief search of Google News - and I haven't even mentioned the sporting analogies: "sandtrap" is a start. And, as I was ruminating on what kind of impoverished language we would have to resort to without such phrases, it suddenly occurred to me that, should part of the western boundary breakwater of one of the outrageous Palm developments be swept away by a Gulf storm (or, in this case, Photoshop), then there is a clear and ominous hidden punctuation message in the design (above). 

Now on to different media. The BBC World Service radio has a weekly programme called "The Forum," described as "three prominent international thinkers debating big ideas." Well, sometimes they make an exception and I was invited to participate. The episode, recorded last week and available on the radio through this week, involved Julian Savalescu, an Oxford professor of practical ethics who has some interesting, provocative, and admittedly controversial ideas, Elif Shafak, who is a prize-winning and fascinating Turkish novelist (she was physically in Istanbul) - and me. It was a novel and enjoyable experience, but I came away thinking about all the things I intended to say but somehow neglected to. It's also available as a podcast on The Forum website. I had intended to steep myself in Elif's writing in advance, but the current dYsfunctional state of Royal Mail conspired against me, and her book, The Bastard of Instanbul, arrived the day before the session; however, I've now nearly finished it and thoroughly recommend this beautifully written, witty, poignant, and compelling tale of Turkish and Armenian families.

Like many others, I found this recent the NASA Earth Observatory image of sediment plumes in the Gulf of Mexico extraordinary both as an illustration of the complexity of natural systems and as a work of art. And I was reminded of one of the many great comments of Albert Einstein, who once declared that before he died he hoped someone would explain quantum physics to him and after he died he hoped God would explain turbulence.

Finally, to complete this compendium of this and that, I can't resist sharing a cartoon from the British satirical magazine, Private Eye:

 

Oh, and since there have been no requests, I presume that everyone has successfully come up with multiple solutions to the sand puzzles posed by Jules and myself? LATEST NEWS! As of now (10.15 pm in London) we have solutions - see the comments on the puzzles post. But are there others?????

Comments

[jules]

Very interesting podcast Michael. You are so fortunate in the UK to have many diverse intellectual forums and discussions available like those on the BBC. Such a truly intelligent, refreshing and stimulating difference from the dumbed down,shouting, vexing "talking heads" and "Faux News" types that make up so much of modern US media.